CSI NY: A Christmas Carol
by Curleyswife3
Summary: Can you imagine what they have in common Mac Taylor and Ebenezer Scrooge? I did, and this is the crazy result. I hope that Charles Dickens will have mercy on me from Heaven...Thaks to readers and, even more, to who leave a comment.
1. Chapter 1

STAVE ONE

THE GHOST OF BILL HUNT

William "Bill" Hunt was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the forensic expert and, Mac Taylor signed the police report about his death. And at the CSI venue of New York the name Mac Taylor enjoyed great credibility, for anything he chose to put his hand to.

Bill Hunt "the savage", first partner of lieutenant Taylor as well as his instructor, was dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for.

You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Bill Hunt was as dead as a door-nail.  
>Mac Taylor knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Seventeen years before, when he still was an inexpert officer, they had arrested together Raymond Harris because of drug and weapons possession; the carryall full of Harris's money had tempted Hunt, who stole 200,000 dollars, leaving Mac subscribing the report about the carryall delivery and making him being shown as scapegoat in case of problems. Just free, Harris had looked for the two officers and, at the end of a car chase, had killed Hunt, guilty of soiling his hands with the death of Miranda, beloved girlfriend of the convict.<p>

In short, Mac personally had witnessed at Bill Hunt's death and he was one of the few to attend at his funeral.

The mention of Hunt's funeral brings me back to the point I started from. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot - say Saint Paul's Churchyard for instance - literally to astonish his son's weak mind.  
>Without any doubt Mac Taylor was so terribly shaken from the sad event to celebrate it, as a workaholic as he was, with an hard working day the same day of the funeral.<p>

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Mac Taylor: a rude, aloof, implacable old sleuth! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his features, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue, stiffened his gait and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.

External heat and cold had little influence on Mac Taylor. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often "came down" handsomely, and Mac Taylor never did.  
>Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, "My dear, how are you? When will you come to see me?" No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men's dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, "No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!"<p>

But Mac couldn't care less! It was what the most delighted him. Pushing him through the crowded streets of the life, moving away every human liking.

Once upon a time—of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve—lieutenant Taylor sat busy in his office. It was cold, bleak, biting weather, foggy withal; and he could hear the people in the streets outside, go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their chests, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already (it had not been light all day) and the lights in the neighboring offices were surfacing trembling, like red stains on the palpable, dark air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms.

Mac Taylor had sent Danny Messer in his office for imparting him what he had decided about his request of having the next day, Christmas day, free of work.

"I'm sorry, Danny" he said to him, without too much contrite air "You know our job never stops, people commit crimes and kill themselves at Christmas too, and I can't leave uncovered a duty like yours".

"But…" the other had risked, who was growing acrimonious "It's the first Christmas day of Lucy… I wanted to stay at home with her and Lindsay!".

"Exactly" Mac answered "I've already given her a free day and I need you here. You know that a year ago I gave you a day off because she was pregnant. This year I can't, many are ill and others had already worked at Christmas day last year"".

"Then" he added with a smile that didn't raise the temperature of the room of a half a centigrade "Lucy is still young, she wouldn't have remembered anything!"

Danny didn't say anything, disappointed and sad, knowing how much Lindsay would have been disappointed. To not talk about him: after all that had happened in the previous months - his wounding, the period spent on the wheelchair when he feared he won't have walked anymore, the serial killer Sean Casey who had followed them during the journey and had broke into their house, kidnapping the baby - that feast seemed to him a way to thank God all had been ok and Lindsay and him were still together, with a little angel. However, he knew that his boss was an hard bone and that, once he had decided, the hope to make him change mind - at Christmas too - were practically inexistent.

He grumbled something that Mac didn't understand, but that wasn't surely a declaration of eternal friendship.

"Come on" he said to him to dismiss him, as the thing could in some way cheer him up instead of making it worse definitely "Tomorrow I'll be at work too!".

"Obviously" the young agent wanted to exclaim at that moment "You don't have anybody to spend Christmas Day with, for you it's a day like another one!".

"Merry Christmas to everybody! God bless you!" a joyful voice suddenly trilled. It was the one of the forensic expert Sid Hammerback, rushed into Mac's office with so unexpected way that these words were the first signal of his arrival.

"Bah" Mac said "Humbug!".

He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, the good doctor, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.

"Christmas a humbug!" he exclaimed "You don't mean that, I am sure?".

"I do" Mac said "Merry Christmas! What right do we have to be happy? Why should we be happy? The evil doesn't stop for the feasts; people lie, steal, kill, hate also at Christmas. On the contrary, sometimes more at Christmas than in working days!".

"Don't be in a bad mood!" Sid retorted, dejected.

"What else can I be" the lieutenant answered "when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Everyone says "Merry Christmas"! But what is Christmas if not a day like the other, a period when you see your way an year older, but not an hour richer? If I could work my will" he continued indignantly "every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should have a little tour on your autopsy table, Sid, then buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!".

"Mac!" Sid Hammerback entreated.

"Sid" the other one replayed "Celebrate Christmas in your way and let me celebrate it like I want to!".

"Celebrate!" the doctor repeated "But you don't celebrate it!"

"Let me not doing it, then" Mac said "Much good may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!"

"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say," returned Sid "Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"

Danny, who was still standing in the office, involuntarily applauded. Becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety, he crossed his arms on his chest and put his hands under his armpits, trying to become smaller as far as disappear.

"Let me hear another sound from you," Mac Taylor said, "and you'll keep your Christmas by losing your employment!" .

"Don't be angry, Mac, come on. Dine with us tomorrow" Sid replayed.

Mac said that he would see him—yes, indeed he did. He went the whole length of the expression, and said that he would see him in that extremity first.

"I'm really sorry, with all my heart… but I went here with my Christmas spirit and I'll keep my Christmas mood until the end" Sid Hammerback concluded "So, Merry Christmas, Mac!".

"Have a nice work!" Mac said.

"And happy new year!".

"Have a nice work!" Mac said.  
>Nevertheless, the doctor left the office, followed by Danny Messer, without the smallest disappointing word.<p>

Mac Taylor came back to his work with a higher himself opinion and a better mood than usually.

Meanwhile the fog and the darkness thickened so, that along the street, despite the lights of the street lamps, you could hardly see in front of you. The ancient tower of a church became invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there. A damaged hydrant in solitude, its overflowing sullenly congealed, and turned to misanthropic ice. The brightness of the shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp heat of the windows, made pale faces ruddy as they passed. The commerce became a splendid joke: a glorious pageant, with which it was next to impossible to believe that such dull principles as bargain and sale had anything to do.

The mayor of New York, in the stronghold of the mighty Mansion House, gave instruction to the fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a mayor's household should; and even the young mason, who an agent had given him a fine for bothering drunkenness last Monday, finished to prepare the Christmas tree in his poor house, while his wife and his son sallied out to buy the necessary for the dinner..  
>Foggier yet, and colder. Piercing, searching, biting cold.<p>

At the end Mac went home. Badly moody, he stood up and went out in the snow; as soon as he was in the street, a boy stopped in front of him to regale him with a Christmas carol: but at the first sound of  
>"God bless you, merry gentleman!<br>May nothing you dismay!"

Mac seized the ruler with such energy of action, that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more congenial frost.

Mac took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy diner; and having read all the newspapers, pausing particularly on the crime news, and beguiled the rest of the evening with the tv, went home to bed.

He lived in one of several anonymous building of New York, put the finishing touches with red bricks, neither particularly ugly and nor particularly pretty: however, at every window colored lights, twinkling comets, paper chains sparkled that night, and behind the glasses, where the calm domestic privacy could be seen, other decorated fir trees peeped out. At every window except, obviously, detective Mac Taylor's.

The power had one off and the yard was so dark that even the agent, who knew every meter, was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold.

Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the mirror in the hall, except it was a bit dirty and filmy. It is also a fact, that Mac Taylor had seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence in that place.

Also that the detective had as little of what is called fancy about him as any man in the city of New York, even including (which is a bold word) the corporation, alderman, and livery. Let it also be borne in mind that Mac Taylor had not bestowed one thought on his ex colleague Bill Hunt "the savage".

And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Mac Taylor, crossing the hall, saw in the mirror

without its undergoing any intermediate process of change, not himself, but William Hunt's face, called "the savage".

Bill Hunt's face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at his ex colleague as he used to look: with his ghostly, sparkling eyes on its ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That, and its livid color, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than a part of its own expression.  
>As Mac looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was his image again.<br>To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy, would be untrue. But he took the lift and, arrived at his floor, walked on the brown-carpet corridor up to his entrance door. But he put his hand upon the key, turned it sturdily, walked in, and lighted the room.

"Bah!" he said and closed the door with a bang. he sound resounded through the house like thunder. Every room above appeared to have a separate peal of echoes of its own. But Mac was not a man to be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door, and walked quietly across the hall, and made a tour of the flat to make sure it was all right. He remembered the face too well to not do it.

Living-room, bedroom, study, kitchen, bathroom: everything was as it had to be. Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa, on the desk the usual pile of files of unsolved cases that he had brought with him from the office. Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in his dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall. Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself in; double-locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured against surprise, he took off his jacket and put on his dressing-gown and slippers; he sat down on his armchair with a handbook about digital prints. He looked through the pages, that he perfectly knew, but the face of Bill Hunt, dead by a long time, arrived as the staff of that old prophet and swallowed up everything. If every image had been a neutral surface, with the property of taking a shape and color by the messy chips of Mac Taylor's thoughts, in every one there would have been a copy of old Hunt's face.

"Humbug!" Mac said; and walked across the room. After several turns, he sat down again. As he sat down, with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, he heard the door bell, the entry phone, the alarm clock, the oven timer and all the other bells of the house ringing together, all of a sudden. This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an hour. The bells ceased as they had begun, together. They were succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below; as if some person were dragging a heavy chain. Mac then remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as dragging chains.

The front door flew open with a booming sound, and then the detective heard the noise much louder, on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight towards his door.

"It's humbug still!" he said "I won't believe it."  
>His colour changed though, when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy door, and passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, every bulb in the flat leaped up, as though it cried, "I know him; William Hunt's Ghost!" and fell again, leaving the agent in the darkness.<p>

The same face: the very same. Bill Hunt, the same he had buried some time ago. The chain he drew was clasped about his middle; it was long, and wound about him like a tail. His body was transparent: Mac Taylor had often heard it said that his ex instructor had no bowels, but he had never believed it until now.

No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked the phantom through and through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes. He was a scientist, a rational man and, still incredulous, fought against his senses.

"How now!" said the detective, caustic and cold as ever. "What do you want with me?"  
>"Much!"—Hunt's voice, no doubt about it.<br>"Who are you?"  
>"Ask me who I was."<br>"Who were you then?" said Mac, raising his voice. "You're particular, for a shade." He was going to say "to a shade," but substituted this, as more appropriate.  
>"In life I was ex colleague William Hunt."<br>"Can you… can you sit down?" asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him.  
>"I can."<br>"Do it, then."  
>The ghost sat down on the armchair next to that where the agent was, as if he were quite used to it.<br>"You don't believe in me," observed the Ghost.  
>"I don't," said Mac.<br>"What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?"  
>"I don't know," said Mac.<br>"Why do you doubt your senses?"  
>"Because," said the detective, "a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"<p>

Mac Taylor was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the spectre's voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones.

To sit, staring at those fixed glazed eyes, in silence for a moment, would play, he felt, the very deuce with him. There was something very awful, too, in the spectre's being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own. Mac could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and shirts, and tassels, were still agitated as by the hot vapor from an oven.

"You see this toothpick?" said the agent, returning quickly to the charge, for the reason just assigned; and wishing, though it were only for a second, to divert the vision's stony gaze from himself.  
>"I do," replied the Ghost.<br>"You are not looking at it," said Mac.  
>"But I see it," said the Ghost, "notwithstanding."<br>"Well!" returned Mac, "I have but to swallow this, and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own creation. Humbug, I tell you! humbug!"  
>At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Mac held on tight to his chair, to save himself from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage round its head, and at the same time he opened the shirt, showing the hole made by the bullets fired by Raymond Harris.<br>Mac fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before his face.  
>"Mercy!" he said. "Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?"<br>"Man of the worldly mind!" replied the Ghost, "do you believe in me or not?"  
>"I do," said Mac. "I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?"<br>"It is required of every man," the Ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world—oh, woe is me!—and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!"  
>Again the specter raised a cry, and shook its chain and wrung its shadowy hands.<br>"You are fettered," said Mac, trembling. "Tell me why?"  
>"I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?"<br>Mac trembled more and more.

"But you too" continued the ghost of William Hunt "you are forging yours, with the dryness, the indifference towards your neighbor, the absence of tender feelings, the loneliness".

Mac got dismay hearing the ghost speaking in that way and he couldn't counter anything. Then, he took heart.

"But you're a thief, a murderer! Me, instead, I spent my life fighting against those like you…" he exclaimed.

"And who are you to judge what is good and, instead, what is evil? Do you maybe think you're over God's laws? Do you think you're exempt from the wrong? You're spending your life in the loneliness, avoiding every human liking, neglecting your soul and devoting yourself just to work!".

"Hear me!" cried the Ghost. "My time is nearly gone."  
>"I will," said Mac.<p>

"How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I may not tell. I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day."  
>It was not an agreeable idea. The agent shivered, and wiped the perspiration from his brow.<p>

"That is no light part of my penance," pursued the Ghost. "I am here tonight because I'm in debt with you: seventeen years ago I put you in the middle; then, when Harris had been released, because of my fault you risked to be killed too… So, I want to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Mac!".

"You will be haunted," resumed the Ghost, "by Three Spirits."  
>Mac Taylor's countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost's had done.<br>"Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Bill?" he demanded, in a faltering voice.  
>"It is."<p>

"I… I think I'd rather not," said Mac.

"Without their visits," said the Ghost, "your destiny will be marked, you'll be doomed to loneliness and pain. Expect the first to-morrow, when the bell tolls One."  
>"Couldn't I take them all at once, and have it over, Bill?" hinted the detective.<br>"Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us!"

When it had said these words, the specter closed the shirttails and bound it round its head, as before. The apparition walked backward from him; and at every step it took, the window raised itself a little, so that when the specter reached it, it was wide open. When they were within two paces of each other, Bill Hunt's Ghost held up its hand, warning him to come no nearer. Mac stopped.

Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear: for on the raising of the hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. The specter, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the bleak, dark night.  
>Mac Taylor followed to the window: desperate in his curiosity. He looked out.<p>

The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Bill Hunt's Ghost; some few were linked together; none were free.

Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded them, he could not tell. But they and their spirit voices faded together; and the night became as it had been when he walked home.  
>Mac closed the window, and examined the door by which the Ghost had entered. It was double-locked, as he had locked it with his own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say "Humbug!" but stopped at the first syllable. And being, from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the Invisible World, or the dull conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of repose; went straight to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon the instant.<p> 


	2. Chapter 2

**STAVE TWO**

**THE FIRST OF THE THREE SPIRITS.**

When Mac Taylor awoke, it was so dark, that looking out of bed, he could scarcely distinguish the transparent window from the opaque walls of his chamber. He was endeavoring to pierce the darkness with his ferret eyes, when the chimes of a neighboring church struck the four quarters. So he listened for the hour.

To his great astonishment the heavy bell went on from six to seven, and from seven to eight, and regularly up to twelve; then stopped. Twelve! It was past two when he went to bed. The clock was wrong. An icicle must have got into the works. Twelve!

He looked at his watch that he had took off and put on the bedside table last night to correct the wrong other one. He saw the hands stopping on twelve.

"Why, it isn't possible," he said, "that I can have slept through a whole day and far into another night. It isn't possible that anything has happened to the sun, and this is twelve at noon!"

The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of bed, and groped his way to the window. He was obliged to rub the frost off with the sleeve of his dressing-gown before he could see anything; and could see very little then. All he could make out was, that it was still very foggy and extremely cold, and that there was no noise of people running to and fro, cars that speeded making a great stir, as there unquestionably would have been if night had beaten off bright day, and taken possession of the world. This was a great relief.

Mac went to bed again, and thought, and thought, and thought it over and over and over, and could make nothing of it. The more he thought, the more perplexed he was; and the more he endeavored not to think, the more he thought.

Bill Hunt's Ghost bothered him exceedingly. Every time he resolved within himself, after mature inquiry, that it was all a dream, his mind flew back again, like a strong spring released, to its first position, and presented the same problem to be worked all through, "Was it a dream or not?" .

Mac Taylor lay in this state until the chime had gone three quarters more, when he remembered, on a sudden, that the Ghost had warned him of a visitation when the bell tolled one. He resolved to lie awake until the hour was passed; and, considering that he could no more go to sleep than be awaken by his wife's hug, this was perhaps the wisest resolution in his power.

The quarter was so long, that he was more than once convinced he must have sunk into a dozen unconsciously, and missed the clock. At length it broke upon his listening ear.

"Ding, dong!"

"A quarter past," said Mac, counting.

"Ding, dong!"

"Half-past!" said Mac.

"Ding, dong!"

"A quarter to it," said Mac.

"Ding, dong!"

"The hour itself," said Mac, triumphantly, "and nothing else!"

He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it now did with a deep, dull, hollow, melancholy _one_. Light flashed up in the room upon the instant, and it came up to his bed.

Mac Taylor, up into a half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to it as I am now to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow.

It was a strange figure—like a child: yet not so like a child as like an old man, viewed through some supernatural medium, which gave him the appearance of having receded from the view, and being diminished to a child's proportions. Its hair, which hung about its neck and down its back, was white as if with age; and yet the face had not a wrinkle in it, and the tenderness bloom was on the skin. The arms were very long and muscular; the hands the same, as if its hold were of uncommon strength. Its legs and feet, most delicately formed, were, like those upper members, bare. It wore a tunic of the purest white; and round its waist was bound a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. It held a branch of fresh green holly in its hand; and, in singular contradiction of that wintry emblem, had its dress trimmed with summer flowers. But the strangest thing about it was, that from the crown of its head there sprung a bright clear jet of light, by which all this was visible; and which was doubtless the occasion of its using, in its duller moments, a great extinguisher for a cap, which it now held under its arm.

Even this, though, when Mac looked at it with increasing steadiness, was _not_ its strangest quality. For as its belt sparkled and glittered now in one part and now in another, and what was light one instant, at another time was dark, so the figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness: being now a thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with twenty legs, now a pair of legs without a head, now a head without a body: of which dissolving parts, no outline would be visible in the dense gloom wherein they melted away. And in the very wonder of this, it would be itself again; distinct and clear as ever.

"Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to me?" the detective asked.

"I am!"

The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, as if instead of being so close beside him, it were at a distance.

"Who, and what are you?" Mac demanded.

"I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."

"Long Past?" inquired Mac: observant of its dwarfish stature.

"No. Your past."

Perhaps, the agent could not have told anybody why, if anybody could have asked him; but he had a special desire to see the Spirit in his cap; and begged him to be covered.

"What!" exclaimed the Ghost, "would you so soon put out, with worldly hands, the light I give? Is it not enough that you are one of those whose passions made this cap, and force me through whole trains of years to wear it low upon my brow!"

Mac reverently disclaimed all intention to offend or any knowledge of having willfully "bonneted" the Spirit at any period of his life. He then made bold to inquire what business brought him there.

"Your welfare!" said the Ghost.

Mac Taylor expressed himself much obliged, but could not help thinking that a night of unbroken rest would have been more conducive to that end. The Spirit must have heard him thinking, for it said immediately:

"Your reclamation, then. Take heed!"

It put out its strong hand as it spoke, and clasped him gently by the arm.

"Rise! and walk with me!"

It would have been in vain for Mac to plead that the weather and the hour were not adapted to pedestrian purposes; that bed was warm, and the thermometer a long way below freezing; that he was clad but lightly in his slippers and dressing-gown; and that he had a cold upon him at that time. The grasp, though gentle as a woman's hand, was not to be resisted. He rose: but finding that the Spirit made towards the window, clasped his robe in supplication.

"I am a mortal," Mac remonstrated, "and liable to fall."

"Bear but a touch of my hand _there_," said the Spirit, laying it upon his heart, "and you shall be upheld in more than this!"

As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall, and stood upon an enormous square, surrounded by high skyscrapers. New York had entirely vanished. Not a vestige of it was to be seen. The darkness and the mist had vanished with it, for it was a clear, cold, winter day, with snow upon the ground. A cold wing, that the detective perfectly knew, was blowing without any interruption.

"Good Heaven!" he said, clasping his hands together, as he looked about him. "Chicago! I was bred in this place. I was a boy here!"

The Spirit gazed upon him mildly. Its gentle touch, though it had been light and instantaneous, appeared still present to Mac Taylor's sense of feeling. He was conscious of a thousand odors floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares long, long, forgotten!

"Your lip is trembling," said the Ghost. "And what is that upon your cheek?"

Mac muttered, with an unusual catching in his voice, that it was a pimple; and begged the Ghost to lead him where he would.

"You recollect the way?" inquired the Spirit.

"Remember it!" cried the agent with fervor; "I could walk it blindfold."

"Strange to have forgotten it for so many years!" observed the Ghost. "Let us go on."

They walked along the road, Mac recognizing every gate, and post, and tree; until a little district appeared in the distance, quite humble, crossed by the river. Some guys came towards them, who were playing throwing fresh snow balls; they were all full of enthusiasm and cried with a loud voice, insomuch as the brisk air overflowed with joyful melodies.

"These are but shadows of the things that have been," said the Ghost. "They have no consciousness of us."

The happy guys were coming up to them and, while they were doing this, Mac recognized everybody and remembered each name: among them, Will and Jimmie Davis, followed by the young brother Andy, who toddled behind them with some difficulty, sinking into the high snow with his child legs.

One of them had been killed just some years after, in front of his eyes, another one had nearly got crazy for the pain and had tried to survive focusing his hate on him. Was Will Davis's death really his fault? Was it cowardliness, as Andy had said him, or the innate instinct which let him to discriminate the good and the evil and consequently act?

He learnt that episode unmercifully, marking the end of his childhood and, at the same time, of his carelessness. He relived it for ages, before managing to apologize himself; and, perhaps, he hadn't managed to through-and-through. Maybe - he understood now - it was to ransom that inaction that had challenged the death since then.

So, why was he happy at that moment seeing them? Why did he have watery eyes and the beat harder when they passed next to him? Why did he feel so full of happiness when he heard them saying "Merry Christmas" while they were separating from each one to come back to their houses? What did "Merry Christmas" mean to Mac Taylor? What was its advantage?

"Let's go on" the Ghost said.

Mac nodded, hardly keeping the tears.

They left the main street taking a secondary street of which he had a lively memory. Soon they reached a dark red brick block of flats: in the court, near to a stars and stripes flag which was flapping in the wind, a forty-year-old, dark-haired man was trying to drag towards the house the biggest Christmas tree a seven-old child could have ever seen. The man was strong, his gloves hardy, but the fir tree was damned heavy and the way had been long.

The entry door suddenly opened and a child with long, ruffled hair, dark as his father's, appeared on the doorstep. He wore no jacket, no gloves, no hat, but the frost didn't keep him and he flew out. He ran towards the man, stumbling in the snow, without being able to keep the enthusiasm: his father had really found the biggest Christmas tree of the quarter that year.

He let go for a moment and dearly ruffled his hair, but the child drew away his father's hand with determined air, almost that tenderly acts like that weren't appreciated, or appropriate in that solemn moment, when they decided their Christmas tree destiny. While the man was laughing seeing on his son's infantile face that serious manner, the child took the fir tree and tried to raise it with all his energy.

It was a family tradition and also a challenge. Seventeen Christmas and, in the quarter, never a bigger tree than Taylors'.

Mac Taylor stood still in the court covered by the snow, and he cried of tenderness seeing what had been.

Not a latent echo in the house, not a squeak and scuffle from the mice behind the panelling, not a drip from the half-thawed water-spout in the dull yard behind, not a sigh among the leafless boughs of one despondent poplar, not the idle swinging of an empty store-house door, no, not a clicking in the fire, but fell upon the heart of Mac with a softening influence, and gave a freer passage to his tears.

The Spirit touched him on the arm, and pointed to his younger self.

"I wish," Mac muttered, putting his hand in his pocket, and looking about him, after drying his eyes with his cuff: "but it's too late now."

"What is the matter?" asked the Spirit.

"Nothing," the agent said. "Nothing. There was a boy singing a Christmas Carol at my office last night. I should like to have given him something: that's all."

The Ghost smiled thoughtfully, and waved its hand: saying as it did so, "Let us see another Christmas!"

Mac's former self grew larger at the words, and the room became a little darker and older. How all this was brought about, he knew no more than you do. He only knew that it was quite correct; that everything had happened so and that he was there, in his dark room, that was pretending to sleep whereas actually he was eaten by the curiosity to know what Santa would have brought him that year. Had he really read his letter? Would he satisfy his wish? Actually, at school he had never been the best and often, to be accepted by his older classmates, he had made some mess, although he perfectly knew he was wrong. The wish to be part of a group was stronger than his good sense.

Mac was reliving those feelings as forty years hadn't passed since then, either forty seconds. He saw the child stood up and, although the night froze, he went downstairs the most silently possible. He saw him stopping when he heard a noise downstairs and he peeped at the living room: so, those steps he heard… he was going to meet Santa! He clearly noticed the surprise and the disappointment marking his face when he realized that the one who was putting a big box wrapped by red and gold paper under the Christmas tree wasn't the famous, white-beard old man, but just… his mother!

He smiled remembering the joy, the next morning, finding out in that famous box wrapped by the red and gold paper exactly what he had wished (that is the same camouflage fatigue of Sergeant Rock, which he wore up to wear it out, also sleeping with it), and it had never had the same taste of the past years.

His mother was dead, old, because of a cerebral aneurysm. Without regain consciousness and without realized it, as they had said him. Without suffer. Since that moment he thought her death and her life had been perfectly successful: his mother was a mild, kind, full of love woman. She had worked very much, but, although the simplicity of her life, it was what the furthermost he could imagine from the word regret.

Sometimes Mac thought about it, and always he affirmed to himself that he only had good memories about her.

"Always a delicate creature," said the Ghost. "But she had a large heart!"

"So she had," the detective muttered.

Although they had but that moment left the house behind them, they were now in the busy thoroughfares of a city, where shadowy passengers passed and repassed; where shadowy cars and coaches battled for the way, and all the strife and tumult of a real city were. It was made plain enough, by the dressing of the shops, that here too it was Christmas time again; but it was evening, and the streets were lighted up. It was very cold and people was hurrying up to come home, in the warm, with the latest presents.

The Ghost stopped in front of a stern, grey building and asked Mac if he knew it. "If I know it!" he said. "I've spent my first police agent's year here!"

They entered: it was the base 22th Police District, small and suburban. It was not a place for whom whished a brilliant career in the Armed Forces.

Seeing an old, ruddy sergeant who had worn the service jacket and was going to come home, the agent cried full of enthusiasm: "Watch out! It's the old sergeant Fezziwig! God bless him: the old Fezziwig, the Irishman, he's back in the land of the living!"

The old man took the gun from the desk drawer and put it in his case, took a look at the clock which said it was nine. He rubbed his hands, fixed his hat, and laughed, calling with a round, oily, fat, jovial voice: "Heeey! Mac! Dick!"

The past Mac Taylor, who had become a young man, entered with his patrol partner. Both two were wearing the dark blue uniform of New York policemen and they had a terrible, serious air.

"Dick Wilkins, exactly!" said Mac to the Ghost. "Sure, here he is. He had been attached to me. Poor Dick. Dear, old Dick!".

"Hey, guys!" the sergeant said. "Are you ready? Now you start your shift: I know, it's hard, it's Christmas Eve, but you are two smart guys!" he laughed and dealt a slap on Mac's shoulder, who didn't expect it and tottered. "Come on guy!" the sergeant said "Don't be always so serious, son!"

His cheerfulness forced him out a smile. Actually, both the past Mac and the present Mac smiled, exactly in the same moment.

Fezziwig reached out Dick Wilkins' hand for a thermos, with a conspiratorial air.

"It is cold out of there, guys" he said "But to cheer you up here you have a little of my famous Irish Christmas punch… just gin and lemon juice, mixed carefully on a low flame by my patient lady, expressly for you two!".

"Knowing her, sergeant" Wilkins joked "I bet there's much more gin than lemon juice, or am I wrong?"

"You would drink when you're on patrol, wouldn't you?" asked a shocked, young Mac Taylor.

Wilkins and Fezziwig burst into laughter together, but it was a laugh full of affection. The young agent put the thermos in his pocket, ignoring the colleague's question and pushed him towards the exit door.

"Let's go!" he said, with the air of whom is going to start a desperate mission with the most depressing adventure partner but, at the same time, would never change that depressing adventure partner with anybody else.

The forensics tenant, who had assisted at the scene with the heart and the spirit of his young himself, turned to the Ghost and realized he was looking at him carefully, while the brightening light over his head radiated.

"A small matter," said the Ghost, "to make these silly folks so full of gratitude."

"Small!" echoed Mac.

heated by the remark, and speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter, self. "It isn't that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count 'em up: what then? The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune."

He felt the Spirit's glance, and stopped.

"What is the matter?" asked the Ghost.

"Nothing particular," said Mac.

"Something, I think?" the Ghost insisted.

"No," said Mac, "No. I should like to be able to say a word or two to my agents just now. That's all."

His former self turned down the lamps as he gave utterance to the wish; and Mac and the Ghost again stood side by side in the open air.

"My time grows short," observed the Spirit. "Quick!"

This was not addressed to Mac, or to any one whom he could see, but it produced an immediate effect. For again he saw himself. He was older now; a man in the prime of life. His face had not the harsh and rigid lines of later years; but it had begun to wear the signs of stress and anxiety.

He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young girl, with long brown hair. "Well" the present Mac Taylor thought "Here we are". That was the moment he was afraid the most.

Claire.

One of the first Christmas he had spent with her: perhaps the most important of their lives. He recognized her apartment, the books were scattered everywhere, even piled up one on one on the floor. Claire wore a red dress and draped herself round the neck a red and silver Christmas paper chain, like it was an original scarf.

"Come on! I'm too curious, show me your present!" she said him, trying to catch the box he was keeping behind his back.

He indicate disagreement with his finger. "You can't. Presents can be opened only on the 25th morning…"

"Oof! Do you have to be a steel sergeant with me, too?" she asked, amused, keeping trying to put her hands behind his back. It was a little conflict, but also amazing for both two.

"Ok, ok…" the young agent gave up, showing to the girl what he was keeping hidden behind his back. Claire's eyes were laughing, but she made a disappointing face when she saw in front of her a big box; it was obvious she expected a smaller and more expressing packet…

"I hope it isn't another food processor…" she said, while she was ripping off the gold paper. "You know that every other woman would have broken with you after a joke like the one of the past year…"

"Come on, open it!" just said Mac, crossing his arms with amused air.

Without nurturing big hopes, Claire took a carton box, opened it and found… another box, a little smaller than the first, well wrapped and decorated with ribbons.

"If I wasn't in love with you, I'd think you're completely crazy!" she said.

Without succeeding in stopping giggle because of the emotion and the happiness, since she was understanding what kind of treatment her sadistic fiancé had reserved for her, she had to unwrap and open at least other five smaller and smaller boxes, accurately arranged one inside one.

She took out a small packet that had the perfect size and she immediately recognized the turquoise wrapping paper decorated with a white ribbon. Tiffany. She destroyed the paper and opened the case covered by satin, where a wonderful diamond ring was shining.

Claire look at the man who was in front of her just for few seconds before throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him passionately.

"Spirit" Mac Taylor said, looking down "Show me no more! Conduct me home. Why do you delight to torture me?"

"One shadow more!" exclaimed the Ghost.

"No more!" cried Mac. "No more. I don't wish to see it. Show me no more!"

But the relentless Ghost pinioned him in both his arms, and forced him to observe what happened next.

They were in another scene and place; the house Claire and he had shared during their married life. It was Christmas evening, too. The air smelled of fir tree, holly and... something burnt, since Claire had just took off the oven a stuffed turkey, in essence what the detective would have called "a burnt corps".

A just some-year older Mac Taylor had just put on his jacket and was going out.

His wife disappointedly looked at him, pointing with his wood spoon the kitchen door, where that disgusting smell came from.

"It's because of the turkey, isn't it?" she said, trying to hide her displeasure of seeing him going to work also at Christmas night.

Mac smiled "It's an emergency… I must go, they've found two corps in Central Park, an old man worn like Santa and another one with green tights dressed up as a Grinch… They could have killed themselves each other…"

"You know I could stand to be left alone at Christmas Eve only if you had to chase Santa's killer, don't you?" she said, throwing out her lump again.

"Don't be angry, Claire, you know how much this job is important for me… it's just a night, one of the many others… I'll be back as soon as possible and I promise you next year I'll spend Christmas with you" the man said, putting the gun in his case and hooking the shield at the trousers belt. Next year…

"Ok" she said, a bit sad but already resigned. "I know we'll have many Christmas days to spend together… Providing that I don't decide beforehand to leave a husband that neglects me and runs away with Santa to give presents all over the world…"

Claire. For a too short period she had brought the spring in the sprawling winter of his life.

What did he fall in love with her? For many reasons she was absolutely an ordinary person, sometimes irrational, sometimes able to get angry for things that he judged insignificant.

Anyway, she had the gift of rationality; in some moments she was able to say what she thought clearly, with so much strength that he had never been able to find the words to contradict her. She did it with serenity and a deep, unconscious wisdom; within her there was no insecurity, no presumption, but only the immense strength of whom has been grown up with love, in the awareness of being accepted. In those moments Mac thought that, over the appearances, she was the strongest between the two.

And witty, full of lightness. Sometimes he managed to remember her smile; yet, she had taken it in her tomb, too. Indeed, either this sentence represented his tragedy: she wasn't inside a tomb, she and her smile had become dust, air, light, wind, other persons too. In some way, they had become the same city where she had born, lived and died.

Was it for this reason that he decided to dedicate all of his energy to protect that same city? But had really been him to decide it?

What a stupid and fool idea! Now he could understand: claiming to save the world, protecting, serving at any cost. The evil acted despite his efforts, it was a war he would never been able to win, that any man would have won.

He could apply the best, sacrificing his time and his pleasure, he could die in the try, but in the end he would have lost the fight: the evil would have lasted until the man would have lasted.

"Spirit!" he said in a broken voice, "remove me from this place."

"I told you these were shadows of the things that have been," said the Ghost. "That they are what they are, do not blame me!"

"Remove me!" Mac exclaimed, "I cannot bear it!"

He turned upon the Ghost, and seeing that it looked upon him with a face, in which in some strange way there were fragments of all the faces it had shown him, wrestled with it.

"Leave me! Take me back. Haunt me no longer!"

In the struggle, if that can be called a struggle in which the Ghost with no visible resistance on its own part was undisturbed by any effort of its adversary, Mac Taylor observed that its light was burning high and bright; and dimly connecting that with its influence over him, he seized the extinguisher-cap, and by a sudden action pressed it down upon its head.

The Spirit dropped beneath it, so that the extinguisher covered its whole form; but though the detective pressed it down with all his force, he could not hide the light: which streamed from under it, in an unbroken flood upon the ground.

Mac was conscious of being exhausted, and overcome by an irresistible drowsiness; and, further, of being in his own bedroom. He gave the cap a parting squeeze, in which his hand relaxed; and had barely time to reel to bed, before he sank into a heavy sleep.

_Thanks to C$Igirl for translation from italian_


	3. Chapter 3

**STAVE THREE**

**THE SECOND OF THE THREE SPIRITS.**

Awaking in the middle of a prodigiously tough snore, and sitting up in bed to get his thoughts together, Mac Taylor had no occasion to be told that the bell was again upon the stroke of One. He felt that he was restored to consciousness in the right nick of time, for the especial purpose of holding a conference with the second messenger dispatched to him through Bill Hunt's intervention. But finding that he turned uncomfortably cold when he began to wonder which of his curtains this new specter would draw back, he put them every one aside with his own hands; and lying down again, established a sharp look-out all round the bed. For he wished to challenge the Spirit on the moment of its appearance, and did not wish to be taken by surprise, and made nervous.

Some of his colleagues often boasted to be men-about-town, indifferent in front of every kind of situation, able to face everything, from a simple street game to the murder. Without venturing on affirming something so biding for Mac Taylor's case, I don't think to exaggerate saying that he was prepared to face several strange apparitions, and nothing, from a baby to a rhino, would have astonished him.

Now, being prepared for almost anything, he was not by any means prepared for nothing; and, consequently, when the Bell struck One, and no shape appeared, he was taken with a violent fit of trembling. Five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour went by, yet nothing came. All this time, he lay upon his bed, the very core and centre of a blaze of ruddy light, which streamed upon it when the clock proclaimed the hour; and which, being only light, was more alarming than a dozen ghosts, as Mac was powerless to make out what it meant, or would be at; and was sometimes apprehensive that he might be at that very moment an interesting case of spontaneous combustion, without having the consolation of knowing it. He already imagined himself laying on Sid's table, surrounded by the curiosity of his ex colleagues.

At last, however, he began to think—as you or I would have thought at first; for it is always the person not in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it, and would unquestionably have done it too—at last, I say, he began to think that the source and secret of this ghostly light might be in the adjoining room, from whence, on further tracing it, it seemed to shine. This idea taking full possession of his mind, he got up softly and shuffled in his slippers to the door.

The moment Mac's hand was on the lock, a strange voice called him by his name, and bade him enter. He obeyed.

It was his own room. There was no doubt about that. But it had undergone a surprising transformation. The walls and ceiling were so hung with living green, that it looked a perfect grove; from every part of which, bright gleaming berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had been scattered there. Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easy state upon this couch, there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to see; who bore a glowing torch, in shape not unlike Plenty's horn, and held it up, high up, to shed its light on Mac, as he came peeping round the door.

"Come in!" exclaimed the Ghost. "Come in! And know me better, man!"

The detective entered timidly, and hung his head before this Spirit. He was not the dogged man he had been; and though the Spirit's eyes were clear and kind, he did not like to meet them.

"I am the Ghost of Christmas Present," said the Spirit. "Look upon me!"

Mac reverently did so. It was clothed in one simple green robe, or mantle, bordered with white fur. This garment hung so loosely on the figure, that its capacious breast was bare, as if disdaining to be awarded or concealed by any artifice. Its feet, observable beneath the ample folds of the garment, were also bare; and on its head it wore no other covering than a holly wreath, set here and there with shining icicles. Its dark brown curls were long and free; free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its cheery voice, its unconstrained demeanor, and its joyful air. Girded round its middle was an antique scabbard; but no sword was in it, and the ancient sheath was eaten up with rust.

"You have never seen the like of me before!" exclaimed the Spirit.

"Never," the agent made answer to it.

"Have never walked forth with the younger members of my family; meaning (for I am very young) my elder brothers born in these later years?" pursued the Phantom.

"I don't think I have," said Mac. "I am afraid I have not. Have you had many brothers, Spirit?"

"More than two thousand," said the Ghost.

"Spirit," said Mac submissively, "conduct me where you will. I went forth last night on compulsion, and I learnt a lesson which is working now. Tonight, if you have ought to teach me, let me profit by it."

"Touch my robe!"

Mac did as he was told, and held it fast.

Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, puddings, fruit, and punch, all vanished instantly. So did the room, the fire, the ruddy glow, the hour of night.

They stood in New York City streets on Christmas morning, where (for the weather was severe) the people made a rough, but brisk and not unpleasant kind of music, in scraping the snow from the pavement in front of their houses and on the tops of their roofs; it was mad delight to the boys to see it come plumping down into the road below, and splitting into artificial little snow-storms.

The house fronts looked black enough, and the windows blacker, contrasting with the smooth white sheet of snow upon the roofs, and with the dirtier snow upon the ground; which last deposit had been ploughed up in deep furrows by the heavy wheels of cars; furrows that crossed and re-crossed each other hundreds of times where the great streets branched off; and made intricate channels, hard to trace in the thick yellow mud and icy water. The sky was gloomy, and the shortest streets were choked up with a dingy mist full of smog, half thawed, half frozen. There was nothing very cheerful in the climate or the town, and yet was there an air of cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer air and brightest summer sun might have endeavored to diffuse in vain.

For, the people who were shoveling away on the housetops were jovial and full of glee; calling out to one another from the parapets, and now and then exchanging a facetious snowball—better-natured missile far than many a wordy jest—laughing heartily if it went right and not less heartily if it went wrong. Shops were still half open and they were radiant in their glory; but the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful promise of the day, that they tumbled up against each other at the door, crashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left their purchases upon the counter, and came running back to fetch them, and committed hundreds of the like mistakes, in the best humor possible.

But soon the steeples called good people all, to church and chapel, and away they came, flocking through the streets in their best clothes, and with their gayest faces. Along the crowded streets, the Spirit took off the covers and sprinkled incense from his torch. And it was a very uncommon kind of torch, for once or twice when there were angry words between some dinner-carriers who had jostled each other, he shed a few drops of water on them from it, and their good humor was restored directly. For they said, it was a shame to quarrel upon Christmas Day. And so it was! God love it, so it was!

They went on their walk, invisible as ever, in a different quarter. A particularly feature of the Ghost was that, despite its gigantic seizes, it could adapt itself to every place, so it stood under a low ceiling with the same grace of supernatural creature with which it would have appeared in a luxury lounge.

It led him to a house the detective knew very well, the agent Danny Messer's one. In the doorway the Spirit smiled and stopped to bless the house.

The small apartment was perfectly decorated for Christmas and it rang out of the wails and giggle of Lucy, upright on her unstable little legs, that was trying to catch the lowest little balls' line hanged on the Christmas tree, risking to bring down it upon herself with lights, paper chains and a comet tip.

Fortunately her dad arrived on time and lifted her up among his arms… What a sweet and light weight to carry… With the child in his arms, who was stirring and was stretching out her arms to pull out the higher decorations, Danny Messer sat at the table where, for the occasion, an embroided with green and red Christmas stars tablecloth had been lying.

Lindsay came in triumphant, carrying a tray on which there was a phenomenal bird that compared with a black swan, the latter would have been an ordinary vision; in fact, things were more or less like that, since the agent usually was too busy with her job to dedicate herself to the cuisine and she reserved her culinary talent only for special occasions like that. A goose stuffed with sage and onions, with apple sauce and crushed potatoes.

But Danny Messer almost had to go; he tried to enjoy the company of his wife and his daughter as much as possible at Christmas, but it was late… He absolutely had to go to work, or his chief would have troubled him, also in such a special day.

His smile died down while he was putting down Lucy in her playpen and ignored the baby's laments, who didn't want to be placed there. At the same speed, Lindsay's smile died down, observing that her husband was putting his gun in the case and was putting on the jacket with false self-assurance.

"Do you really have to?" her gloomy look meant.

"I really have to" answered the guy's blue eyes.

The Spirit looked at Danny Messer in his face and made a pain face that Mac noticed.

"What's on?" he asked him, inexplicably worried.

"I see a vacant seat" the Ghost answered, with sad voice "A shield inside a drawn, held with love. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, a terrible misfortune will beat down on this house and this family: the young man will die".

"No, no…" Mac said "No…"

"If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future" the specter repeated "None of my sort will find him in this place".

The tenant bent before the Ghost's rebuke, and trembling cast his eyes upon the ground. But he raised them speedily, on hearing his own name.

"You could at least wait!" Lindsay sarcastically said, handing to her husband a glass of steaming punch "Let's drink to Mac Taylor..."

"To Mac Taylor who's favor to this feast!" Danny laughed rising the glass.

"And it must be Christmas Day" she added "because it is possible to drink a toast to a man so dull, reserved and hard like him! He takes you away from us at Christmas, too!"

Danny hugged her to take away that invincible gloom.

"I'll drink to his health because of your love and because it's Christmas" the young woman said "But not for his love! If Lucy had to throw a tantrum because she don't want to go to bed, when she will be older, we would be able to use him as a threat, like an ogre of this family..."

Both two soundly laughed: there was nothing of high mark in this, it wasn't a family particularly rich or powerful, their house was completely normal, but they were happy, thankful for the present and they loved each other; when they were less visible, they seemed happier in the light rain that the Spectre's torch diffused on them at the moment to go away.

Mac Taylor didn't stop looking at them until the end, especially Danny.

By this time it was getting dark, and snowing pretty heavily; and as Mac and the Spirit went along the streets, the brightness of the roaring fires in kitchens, parlors, and all sorts of rooms, was wonderful. Here, the flickering of the blaze showed preparations for a cozy dinner, with deep red curtains, ready to be drawn to shut out cold and darkness. There all the children of the house were running out into the snow to meet their married sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts, and be the first to greet them. Here, again, were shadows on the window-blind of guests assembling; and there a group of handsome girls, all hooded and fur-booted, and all chattering at once, tripped lightly off to some near neighbor's house. One of them laughed out loudly as the Spirit passed, though little kenned the lamplighter that he had any company but Christmas!

The Spirit did not tarry here, but bade Mac hold his robe, and passing on above the moor, sped—whither? Not to sea? To sea. Looking back, he saw the last of the land, a frightful range of rocks, behind them; and his ears were deafened by the thundering of water, as it rolled and roared, and raged among the dreadful caverns it had worn, and fiercely tried to undermine the earth.

Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league or so from shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed, the wild year through, there stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps of sea-weed clung to its base, and storm-birds—born of the wind one might suppose, as sea-weed of the water—rose and fell about it, like the waves they skimmed.

But even here, two men who watched the light had made a fire, that through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed out a ray of brightness on the awful sea. Joining their horny hands over the rough table at which they sat, they wished each other Merry Christmas in their can of grog; and one of them: the elder, too, with his face all damaged and scarred with hard weather, as the figure-head of an old ship might be: struck up a sturdy song that was like a Gale in itself.

Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea—on, on—until, being far away, as he told Mac, from any shore, they lighted on a warship. They stood beside the helmsman at the wheel, the look-out in the bow, the officers who had the watch; dark, ghostly figures in their several stations; but every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his companion of some bygone Christmas Day, with homeward hopes belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder word for another on that day than on any day in the year; and had shared to some extent in its festivities; and had remembered those he cared for at a distance, and had known that they delighted to remember him.

It was a great surprise to Mac Taylor, while listening to the moaning of the wind, and thinking what a solemn thing it was to move on through the lonely darkness over an unknown abyss, whose depths were secrets as profound as Death: it was a great surprise to Scrooge, while thus engaged, to hear a hearty laugh.

It was a much greater surprise to him to recognize it as the one of the pathologist Sid Hammerback and to find himself in a bright, dry, gleaming room, with the Spirit standing smiling by his side, and looking at the medic with approving affability.

"He said that Christmas was a humbug, as I live!" cried Sid. "He believed it too!"

"More shame for him!" his wife laughed.

"However, his offences carry their own punishment... I am sorry for him; I couldn't be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers by his ill whims! Himself, always. Well, he's lonelier and lonelier, closer and closer, more and more intractable. The consequence of his taking a dislike to us, and not making merry with us, is, as I think, that he loses some pleasant moments, which could do him no harm. I am sure he loses pleasanter companions than he can find in his own thoughts, either in his moldy old office, or his dusty chambers. He may rail at Christmas till he dies, but he can't help thinking better of it—I defy him—if he finds me going there, in good temper, year after year, and inviting him here. And I think I shook him yesterday."

It was their turn to laugh now at the notion of his shaking Mac Taylor. But being thoroughly good-natured, and not much caring what they laughed at, so that they laughed at any rate, he encouraged them in their merriment, and passed the bottle joyously.

After having played the piano and sung Christmas songs, Sid suggested a game, because sometimes it's pleasant to become younger again, and there's no better moment than Christmas, when his powerful Creator was a young boy himself.

It was a Game called Yes and No, where the doctor had to think of something, and the rest must find out what; he only answering to their questions yes or no, as the case was. The brisk fire of questioning to which he was exposed, elicited from him that he was thinking of an animal, a live animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a savage animal, an animal that growled and grunted sometimes, and talked sometimes, and lived in New York, and walked about the streets, and wasn't made a show of, and wasn't led by anybody, and didn't live in a menagerie, and was never killed in a market, and was not a horse, or an ass, or a cow, or a bull, or a tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear. At every fresh question that was put to him, Sid Hammerback burst into a fresh roar of laughter; and was so inexpressibly tickled, that he was obliged to get up off the sofa and stamp. At last the plump sister, falling into a similar state, cried out: "I have found it out, daddy! I know what it is!"

"What is it?" he cried.

"It's your chief, Mac Tayl-o-o-o-o-r!"

Which it certainly was. Admiration was the universal sentiment, though some objected that the reply to "Is it a bear?" ought to have been "Yes;" inasmuch as an answer in the negative was sufficient to have diverted their thoughts from the tenant, supposing they had ever had any tendency that way.

"He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure," said Sid's wife, "and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health. Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the moment; and I say, 'Mac Taylor!' "

"Well! Mac Taylor!" they cried.

"A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to him, whatever he is... God bless us!" Sid added, rising the glass.

The whole scene passed off in the breath of the last word spoken by the doctor; and the detective and the Spirit were again upon their travels.

Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited, but always with a happy end. The Spirit stood beside sick beds, and they were cheerful; on foreign lands, and they were close at home; by struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope; by poverty, and it was rich. In almshouse, hospital, and jail, in misery's every refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not made fast the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left his blessing, and taught Mac his precepts.

It was a long night, if it were only a night; but Mac had his doubts of this, because the Christmas Holidays appeared to be condensed into the space of time they passed together. It was strange, too, that while he remained unaltered in his outward form, the Ghost grew older, clearly older. The agent had observed this change, but never spoke of it, until they left a children's Twelfth Night party, when, looking at the Spirit as they stood together in an open place, he noticed that its hair was grey.

"Are spirits' lives so short?" he asked.

"My life upon this globe, is very brief," replied the Ghost. "It ends tonight."

"Tonight!" cried Mac.

"Tonight at midnight. Hark! The time is drawing near."

The bell struck twelve.

Mac Taylor looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old Bill Hunt, and lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like a mist along the ground, towards him.


	4. Chapter 4

**STAVE FOUR**

**THE LAST OF THREE SPIRITS**

The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently, approached. When it came near him, Mac Taylor bent down upon his knee; for in the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery.

It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible save one outstretched hand. But for this it would have been difficult to detach its figure from the night, and separate it from the darkness by which it was surrounded.

He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside him, and that its mysterious presence filled him with a solemn dread. He knew no more, for the Spirit neither spoke nor moved.

"I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come?" he said.

The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand.

"You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in the time before us," Mac pursued. "Is that so, Spirit?"

The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an instant in its folds, as if the Spirit had inclined its head. That was the only answer he received.

Although well used to ghostly company by this time, Mac Taylor feared the silent shape so much that his legs trembled beneath him, and he found that he could hardly stand when he prepared to follow it. The Spirit paused a moment, as observing his condition, and giving him time to recover.

But the man was all the worse for this. It thrilled him with a vague uncertain horror, to know that behind the dusky shroud, there were ghostly eyes intently fixed upon him, while he, though he stretched his own to the utmost, could see nothing but a spectral hand and one great heap of black.

"Ghost of the Future!" he exclaimed, "I fear you more than any spectre I have seen. But as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me?"

It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight before them.

"Lead on!" said Mac Taylor. "Lead on! The night is waning fast, and it is precious time to me, I know. Lead on, Spirit!"

The Phantom moved away as it had come towards him. The detective followed in the shadow of its dress, which bore him up, he thought, and carried him along.

They scarcely seemed to enter the city; they were in front of the headquarter of the New York Police Department, where more or less young agents, in uniform or in plain clothes, made haste up and down, making the handcuffs jingle, hanged at the belt near the gun case, and they entertained themselves in small groups, looked at the clock, spoke at the mobile, chatted and so on, as Mac had seen them doing many times.

The Spirit stopped beside one little knot of agents in plain clothes. Observing that the hand was pointed to them, Mac Taylor advanced to listen to their talk.

"No," said a great fat agent with a monstrous chin, "I don't know much about it, either way. I only know he's dead."

"When did he die?" inquired another.

"Last night, I believe. During a gunfire..."

"What the hell!" asked a third, taking firing a cigarette. "I thought he'd never die."

"God knows," said the first, with a yawn.

"Who will take his place?" asked a red-faced gentleman with a pendulous excrescence on the end of his nose, that shook like the gills of a turkey-cock.

"I haven't heard," said the man with the large chin, yawning again. "That's sure I won't be!"

This pleasantry was received with a general laugh.

"It's likely to be a very cheap funeral," said the same speaker; "for upon my life I don't know of anybody to go to it. Suppose we make up a party and volunteer?"

"I don't mind going if a lunch is provided," observed the gentleman with the excrescence on his nose. "But I must be fed, if I make one."

Another laugh.

"Well, after all," said the first speaker, "I'll offer to go, if anybody else will. When I come to think of it, I'm not at all sure that I wasn't his most particular friend; for we used to stop and speak whenever we met. Bye, bye!"

Speakers and listeners strolled away, and mixed with other groups. Mac knew the men, and looked towards the Spirit for an explanation.

The Phantom glided on into a street. Its finger pointed to two persons meeting. The detective listened again, thinking that the explanation might lie here.

He knew these men, also, perfectly. They were the detectives' chief Brigham Sinclair and the inspector Gerrard. Two men that had made him not so few problems.

"How are you?" said one.

"How are you?" returned the other.

"Well!" said Sinclair. "Old Scratch has got his own at last, hey?"

"So I am told," returned the second. "Cold, isn't it?"

"Seasonable for Christmas time. Will we see at the Carters' tonight?"

"Sure" Gerrard answered "On time, at seven o' clock."

"First I have to go to the funeral and read something... I can't refuse, the Mayor asked me..." the Chief said, with bored air.

"What a pain!" returned the other.

"Yeah... But it will not last so much" said the first "See you later!"

Not another word. That was their meeting, their conversation, and their parting.

Mac Taylor was at first inclined to be surprised that the Spirit should attach importance to conversations apparently so trivial; but feeling assured that they must have some hidden purpose, he set himself to consider what it was likely to be. They could scarcely be supposed to have any bearing on the death of Bill Hunt, for that was Past, and this Ghost's province was the Future. Nor could he think of any one immediately connected with himself, to whom he could apply them. However, he resolved to treasure up every word he heard, and everything he saw; and especially to observe the shadow of himself when it appeared. For he had an expectation that the conduct of his future self would give him the clue he missed, and would render the solution of these riddles easy.

He looked about in that very place for his own image; but another man stood in his accustomed corner, and though the clock pointed to his usual time of day for being there, he saw no likeness of himself among the multitudes that poured in trough the Police Department. He wasn't so surprised because he imagined that he could have changed life or job, or city, too.

Quiet and dark, beside him stood the Phantom, with its outstretched hand. When he roused himself from his thoughtful quest, he fancied from the turn of the hand, and its situation in reference to himself, that the Unseen Eyes were looking at him keenly. It made him shudder, and feel very cold.

Suddenly he understood.

"I see, I see. The case of this unhappy man might be my own. My life tends that way, now. Merciful Heaven, what is this!"

He recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed, and now he almost touched a metal table, identical to those he had seen and worked on many times, assisting at the autopsies of violent crimes' victims he had investigated on.

A bare bed on which, under a simple, white sheet stained with blood in more than a place, lied something that, even if it was dead, revealed itself with a terrible language.

The room was very dark, too dark to be observed with any accuracy, though Mac Taylor glanced round it in obedience to a secret impulse, anxious to know what kind of room it was. A pale light, rising in the outer air, fell straight upon the bed; and on it, plundered and bereft, unwatched, unwept, uncared for, was the body of this man.

The agent glanced towards the Phantom. Its steady hand was pointed to the head.

The cover was so carelessly adjusted that the slightest raising of it, the motion of a finger upon Mac Taylor's part, would have disclosed the face. He thought of it, felt how easy it would be to do, and longed to do it; but had no more power to withdraw the veil than to dismiss the spectre at his side.

Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy dominion! But of the loved, revered, and honoured head, thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released; it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand was open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and the pulse a man's. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life immortal!

No voice pronounced these words in Mac's ears, and yet he heard them when he looked upon the cold, metal table.

He thought, if this man could be raised up now, what would be his foremost thoughts? The job, the tragic memories of the past, again the work and only it... They have brought him to a rich end, truly!

He lay, in the dark empty house, with not a woman or a child, to say that he was kind to me in this or that, and for the memory of one kind word I will be kind to him.

"Spirit!" he said, "this is a fearful place. In leaving it, I shall not leave its lesson, trust me. Let us go!"

Still the Ghost pointed with an unmoved finger to the head.

"I understand you," the detective returned, "and I would do it, if I could. But I have not the power, Spirit. I have not the power."

Again it seemed to look upon him.

"If there is any person in the town, who feels emotion caused by this man's death," he said quite agonised, "show that person to me, Spirit, I beseech you!"

The Phantom spread its dark robe before him for a moment, like a wing; and withdrawing it, revealed a dark, dirty, messy room. The man believed to recognize it for a moment, but that room was different from how he remembered and it confused him: the flat smelled musty, cigarettes' steam and deep desperation. And loneliness. The number of strong drinks and beer bottles, empty or quite empty, that were lying scattered everywhere - on the dirty floor, on the ripped sofa, even in the kitchen sink - revealed without any doubt that it was an alcoholic's house.

At first he didn't see anybody, then he heard a thick voice that reminded him some confused memory that he couldn't identify. He saw the heavy shape of a woman, wrapped up into a dirty, checked shirt that had to be light blue once and now it tended sadly to gray. The body, although it didn't belong to a very old person, was prematurely old, swollen, marked. Sadness and brutalization were shown by every motion of that body, bent by the suffering. She was turned by back and he could catch sight of her long, brown hair, winnowed and dirty. She was talking at the phone.

"Yeah, I've heard it at the television news" was saying a voice that seemed him familiar and unknown at the same time. "But thanks to have phoned me... Don't worry, I'm ok".

After a moment, the voice restarted: "No, I won't go to the funeral, among the other I think nobody goes… Will you come?"

"Your husband is right" she continued, after having waited the answer at her question "It could be risky to take the plane from New Orleans for this reason, by now the birth won't take much more time. Then, I don't think it's worth doing it… Yeah, she's ok, thanks, she's still at my sister's, bye, thanks again…"

She suddenly concluded the communication while the woman on the other side of the phone continued talking and she flung the cordless away, beyond the sofa. The device, falling on the floor, made a metallic sound and switched off. The woman gave in to a laugh that didn't have anything happy: it was full of hate, anger, regret. Deformed by the alcohol, heavy, terrifying in its way.

A laugh that echoed in the bare flat and hit the detective at the heart, as that conversation was about him and not a stranger.

"Bastard!" continued the woman, without turning towards them and, in that way, hiding her face from the two that were looking at her, invisible and silent. "So your moment has arrived… Bastard!" she repeated merciless.

The anger in her voice dissolved in heavy tears, and panting hiccups. She wasn't able to control them anymore, and the hiccups grew until the woman pulled something from the small pocket of the shirt. A small, black object that she kept in her hands, wetting it with her tears. It was possible to realize that she had done it many, too many times.

Slowly she calmed down. Mac Taylor didn't know how it could happen, but he managed to hear the woman's thoughts, what she didn't say but that crossed her heart and mind.

"It was your fault, if you hadn't forced him to do that turn even on Christmas day, if he hadn't followed those robbers, he would have been here now, near me… with us… I wouldn't have been like that, I wouldn't have lost anything, even my daughter! Anyway, now you're dead I can't hate you anymore… if I think what your life was like…"

"Now you're gone maybe I can go on, maybe I can forget…"

Yes, the woman could feel a lighter heart, even if it was so heavy; that man's death made her more peaceful. The only emotion that had bred, and the Ghost could show him, was a relief feeling.

"Spectre," said Mac Taylor, "something informs me that our parting moment is at hand. I know it, but I know not how. Tell me what man that was whom we saw lying dead?"

The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come conveyed him, as before - though at a different time, he thought: indeed, there seemed no order in these latter visions, save that they were in the Future - near the offices of the Crime Lab, but even this time he didn't see himself. In fact the Spectre didn't stop, but went on, like he wanted to reach that just mentioned ending , until Mac Taylor begged him to stop.

"This place" he said "that we're quickly crossing is my office, it had been for a long time. I recognize everything; let me see how I'll be like in the future!".

The Spirit stopped; the hand was pointed elsewhere.

"The office is yonder," the agent exclaimed. "Why do you point away?"

The inexorable finger underwent no change.

Mac hastened to the window of his office, and looked in. It was an office still, but not his. The furniture, the photos hanged at the walls, were not the same, and the figure in the chair was not himself. The Phantom pointed as before.

He joined it once again, and wondering why and whither he had gone, accompanied it until they reached an iron gate. He paused to look round before entering.

A churchyard. Here, then; the wretched man whose name he had now to learn, lay underneath the ground. It was a worthy place. Walled in by houses; overrun by grass and weeds, the growth of vegetation's death, not life; choked up with too much burying; fat with repleted appetite. A worthy place!

The Spirit stood among the graves, and pointed down to one. He advanced towards it trembling. The Phantom was exactly as it had been, but he dreaded that he saw new meaning in its solemn shape.

"Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point," said the man, "answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?"

Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood.

"Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead," said Mac. "But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!"

The Spirit was immovable as ever.

The detective crept towards it, trembling as he went; and following the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave his own name, _Mckenna Boyd Taylor jr._

"Am _I_ that man who lay upon the autopsy table?" he cried, upon his knees.

The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back again.

"No, Spirit! Oh no, no!"

The finger still was there.

"Spirit!" he cried, tight clutching at its robe, "hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope!"

For the first time the hand appeared to shake.

"Good Spirit," he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell before it: "Your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life!"

The kind hand trembled.

"I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!"

In his agony, he caught the spectral hand. It sought to free itself, but he was strong in his entreaty, and detained it. The Spirit, stronger yet, repulsed him.

Holding up his hands in a last prayer to have his fate reversed, he saw an alteration in the Phantom's hood and dress. It shrunk, collapsed, and dwindled down into his clock on the bedside table.


	5. Chapter 5

**STAVE FIVE**

**THE END OF IT**

Yes! The radio alarm was exactly in its own place, on the bedside table. The bedside table was his own, the bed was his own, the room was his own. Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, to make amends in!

"I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!" Mac Taylor repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. "The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. Oh Bill Hunt! Heaven, and the Christmas Time be praised for this!".

He was so fluttered and so glowing with his good intentions, that his broken voice would scarcely answer to his call. He had been sobbing violently in his conflict with the Spirit, and his face was wet with tears.

"I'm still here... the shadows of the things that would have been, may be dispelled. They will be. I know they will!"

Shaving himself wasn't very easy, because his hand continued shaking; and shaving asks attention, even if you don't dance while you're doing it. But if he had cut away his nose tip, he would have put on a plaster and he would have been happy anyway.

He quickly got dressed, without knowing how he was like. Hopping he arrived in the living room and there he stayed, perfectly winded.

"There's the door, by which the Ghost of Bill entered! There's the corner where the Ghost of Christmas Present, sat! There's the window where I saw the wandering Spirits! It's all right, it's all true, it all happened. Ha ha ha!"

Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh. The father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs!

"I don't know what day of the month it is!" said the agent, running to the street. "I don't know how long I've been among the Spirits. I don't know anything. Never mind. I don't care."

He went out the main door: no fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold; cold, piping for the blood to dance to; Golden sunlight; Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious! Glorious!

"What's today!" cried the detective, calling downward to a boy in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look about him.

"What?" returned the boy, with all his might of wonder.

"What's today?" he said.

"Today!" replied the boy. "It's Christmas Day."

"It's Christmas Day!" said Mac to himself. "I haven't missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of course they can".

He didn't finish to pronounce these phrases that a thought crossed his mind: he had to do a very important thing, before it had been too late.

He ran like hell, rescuing more than once to break his neck bone slipping on the fresh snow and, nevertheless, he was absolutely happy and anxious to do what he was going to do. He seemed so in a good mood that two or three kind persons, nearly colliding with him, said to him "Good morning! Merry Christmas!". Mac Taylor later affirmed that of every joyful sounds he had ever heard, those were the most joyful.

He breathless arrived at the foot of the skyscraper where there was the Crime Lab and, without stopping to wind back, he breathlessly started to look for the young agent Danny Messer. He had to stop him before he had left the lab!

Fortunately, he surprised him while, with sad air, he was getting on his car.

"Stop Danny!" he cried with all his strength.

"What?" the other replied, surprised.

The detective was breathless and had to wait some second before talk again.

"Danny, I've changed my mind" he said as soon as he managed to speak "Go home to Lindsay and Lucy... Go to them and don't come back till tomorrow afternoon!"

"Mac, you said me..." the guy replied, unbelieving; for a moment he thought to use the handcuffs hanged to his belt to immobilize the man standing in front of him, holding him down and call somebody for help and a straitjacket.

"Don't think about what I told you yesterday!" the man answered, with the biggest smile Danny remembered to have ever seen since he'd known him "yesterday was another day, and it was all different! Go home..." he repeated, without stopping smiling.

"And about the turn?" the young man rescued.

"Don't worry!" the tenant added "I'll cover you turn personally… Now I only want you go home to your family, it's Christmas!"

At that point, Danny returned the smile thinking it was really Christmas because he could live a moment like that. Danny shaked his hand with him and the other hugged him, dealing a slap on his shoulder.

"Ah, I was forgetting…" the tenant added while Danny was going away "Do wish merry Christmas to Lindsay and Lucy by me!"

The man nodded, more and more shacked.

"Don't forget it!" he said again.

The same night, while he was sitting on the plane which would have brought him to New Orleans, the detective Mac Taylor was thinking that, without any doubt, some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.

Mac Taylor was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; he was a loving husband to Stella Bonasera and a great father, and a friend to Danny Messer, who _didn't_ die, and to Lindsay Monroe, who _didn't _become an alcoholic.

He became a good chief, the best of the men he could have known in that good, old city, or any other good, old city,

town, or borough, in the good old world. And for this reason he didn't stop being a thorn in criminals' flesh of that good, old city.

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Sid Hammerback observed, God bless Us, Every One!

THE END

_These characters__, unfortunately, __does not __belong __to me__. __This __story was not __written __for profit__._

_Ciao, alla prossima. C.F._


End file.
